Goldberg: Breitbart's Ben Shapiro 'fascist'

2/20/13 2:57 PM EST

Earlier this month, Breitbart.com editor-at-large Ben Shapiro cited Senate sources who told him — "exclusively" — that Chuck Hagel, President Barack Obama's nominee for secretary of defense, had received funding from a group called "Friends of Hamas."

Never mind that "Friends of Hamas" doesn't exist and that rumors of its existence have been sourced, by New York Daily News reporter Dan Friedman, to a congressional aide's bad joke — Shapiro is doubling down: "Our Senate source denies that Friedman is the source of this information," he writes today.

Today, Jeffrey Goldberg, a far more credible reporter — you may know him from his interviews with President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — adds that Shapiro once endorsed forcibly expelling Palestinians from the West Bank, "the position of the extremist Meir Kahane, who was banned by the Israeli Supreme Court from participating in Israeli politics because of his racist views," Goldberg notes.

"Shapiro, who has positioned himself as a stalwart defender of Israel and of the Jewish people, has expressed views that place him squarely in the fascist camp," Goldberg explains. "Not only is he to the right of Chuck Hagel and Barack Obama, he is to the right of the mainstream pro-Israel community; of the right-wing Zionist Organization of America; the Likud Party; and the governing body of the West Bank settlement movement."

"Shapiro is the one who seems completely divorced from Jewish values," Goldberg concludes. "His leadership role in the dump-Hagel movement reflects well on Barack Obama."